I get how what you’re saying [about surrendering to a world with certain values and attributes] makes sense for a novel like “1984,” but how does it make sense for art forms like nonnarrative music, which you make, or abstract paintings?
That’s the most interesting question you could have asked. I’m absolutely fascinated by this question, because I think I have an answer, and I don’t think it has ever been well answered. What happens when you go look at a painting you’ve never seen before? What I think happens is that when you look at that picture, you’re seeing it in the context of all the other pictures you’ve ever seen. When you go and look at something new, what you’re saying is, “What’s different about this experience?” In many instances, there won’t be anything different, in which case you’re not that interested. But if you can look at it and say, “That’s more angular. That’s fuzzier. That’s much more this, much more that” — we’re very good at understanding differences in feeling within our own long narrative of looking at pieces of work. But what does it mean, for example, when a picture is scratchier than another? You read that as, This is urgent. The artist didn’t have time to make it pretty. We read messages that don’t have a text quality to them, and we still pick up on the ideas that make them different. Or take Bauhaus. When Bauhaus comes along, it’s saying, “We no longer think of the world as divided into beautiful things and functional things.” That’s a philosophical position about the world. Art, even when it’s nonnarrative, makes those kinds of points all the time.